To start, the Hudson Valley is home to a growing ecosystem of tech startups, the Hudson Valley Tech Meetup (with more than 2,000 members!), Catskills Conf (celebrating tech and makers culture in the Hudson Valley), and the Hudson Valley Startup Fund (which has financed some of the area’s most interesting ventures). There are great collegiate engineering programs in the area and further upstate. The Hudson Valley is also known as IBM’s old stomping grounds, which left behind a long lineage of technology experience and expertise.

But the answer is also, and again, “because we live here.”

Four years ago, my wife Chelsa and I got married in the Hudson Valley and bought a home near Kingston, NY. The area is beautiful and it can be an amazing escape from the madness of NYC. In the past few years, we’ve developed a strong personal connection with the Hudson Valley and deep relationships with people who call it home. We’ve gotten a sense of the entrepreneurial and creative energy in both the community and startup ecosystem. Many of you may know that we’ve been working together with some amazing folks in the community to build a soccer team in Kingston called Stockade FC (it’s like a startup, only soccer!). Through that journey and more, we’ve met the folks behind some of the Hudson Valley’s most interesting ventures, projects and local businesses.

I LOVE the second part of that answer.

“Because we live here.”

Because it’s something you have to see and feel and experience firsthand for yourself to really get it.​​

Honestly, I didn’t get it at first either.

As a kid, all I ever did was dream of GettingTFO.

Upon graduating Spackenkill High School, I immediately left to live in big cities for the next dozen or so years.

And when I came back, it felt like a required rest stop, not a planned destination.

But then I got here. I was living here.

That’s what I started to get it.

And the more I saw, the more I became convinced.

One of the things I would like to do with DONUTS videos in particular is to better tell that story.

Part of which means meeting more people and seeing more things.

I need to explore a lot more, to get out of my comfort zone.

I can’t tell that story if I don’t intimately know and live it myself.

But it’s something that’s been percolating in my mind for quite a while now.